affinity photo How to cheat at conserving an old painting!

[Kasper-V]

Empty space ...

... filled!

 

Last week we paid a visit to Shugborough, Staffordshire, an eighteenth century house and former home of photographer Patrick Lichfield, owned by the  National Trust. The Room of Imaginary Landscapes has several enormous paintings fitted to the walls depicting, well, imaginary landscapes. The paintings are being taken down for conservation and cleaning; they are well over two hundred years old, after all. One has been removed from its mount and is resting on a stand while it waits to be taken away, and I took the opportunity of photographing it ... which was easier said than done! At about ten feet by eight, and with only a small space to work in, I had to take three photos and stitch them, then do my best to restore the result to a straight-sided rectangle with the Mesh Warp Tool.

  

Next I cleaned up the result by increasing the saturation and contrast and one or two little tweaks; if I had the patience, I might have done a lot more and fixed those water stains, for instance. Here's 'before' and 'after' ...

 

 

And all that remained was to distort the finished image to fit the gap in the frame, using the Move Tool.

[GarryP]

Very nice work, especially considering what you had to work with at the start.
Nicely shows the power of Affinity Photo when put in the right hands.

[Kasper-V]

Thanks Garry. And that was a fairly quick job; as I say, with a bit more effort and time it could have been better still. I'm too lazy ... but there are lots more photos waiting to be shot!

[GarryP]

You're welcome.

[Alfred]

49 minutes ago, GarryP said:

Very nice work, especially considering what you had to work with at the start.
Nicely shows the power of Affinity Photo when put in the right hands.

What he said! 

17 minutes ago, Kasper-V said:

Thanks Garry. And that was a fairly quick job; as I say, with a bit more effort and time it could have been better still. I'm too lazy ... but there are lots more photos waiting to be shot!

The right-hand edge does look a little bit as though it’s trying to escape from the frame, but it’s nevertheless a pretty good result. I’m looking forward to seeing your next effort, Steve. 

[firstdefence]

Top effort and nice finished effect. I think the colouring could do with a bit of toning down, seems a bit too bright, a bit too HDR.

[EZeemering]

Interesting. It's just a brick wall behind it. Never thought of that. I wonder if they add an extra protection layer between the painting and the wall after they are done. 

Nice work on the painting. It must have been a pain with the mesh tool. Although I'm OK with the toning on the final, I agree with @firstdefence that the image could be toned down a bit on the composition to match the lightning of the room. 

[Kasper-V]

If you look at many restored and cleaned paintings from the period -- and the 19th century -- the colours are indeed very bright  and saturated; that's what I had in mind when I was working. But I agree that if it had been a photograph, the colours would look most unnatural.

I'm not sure about the backing on the paintings. They're not outside walls now, but the original house was extended at the sides, which is probably the reason t=fir the two different kinds of brick -- a window or doorway being filled in. The room steward didn't know the details either, although she was red-hot on the history of the place and the artwork.